GSK asthma app wins healthcare technology award

A GlaxoSmithKline mobile app that helps asthma patients better understand their condition and how to manage it was one of six winners at the AXA PPP Health Tech & You Awards.

MyAsthma, which was developed with UK agency The Earthworks, can track medicine usage and asthma attacks, and use location, weather and air quality data to learn what trigger’s a patient’s asthma.

An industry first, GSK’s app is the first from pharma has been approved as a Class 1 medical device and CE marked.

Its fellow winners at the Awards included software that turns physiotherapy into video games and a collection of clothes that heighten or mute senses to help people affected by autism.

Also rewarded were the Affinity connected device for people with cancer to monitor their blood cell counts from home, the uMotif platform – which captures high quality health data from patients through the digital tools they use, and social network for health HealthUnlocked.

Gordon Henderson, marketing and innovation director at AXA PPP healthcare, said: “The Awards recognise and celebrate the best in personal health technology innovations to benefit consumers and our members to live and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

“The winners and finalists this year show an emergence of artificial intelligence, interactive wearables, gamification and personal medical testing – health tech that would have seemed very ahead of the time when AXA PPP healthcare founded the Health Tech & You programme in 2014.”

The 2017 award winners were announced at The Design Museum in London last week, where they will be on display as part of a free Health Tech & You exhibition that will run until 8 May.